The Keepers of the People

1904An hour later, her head muffled in a cloak, she rode out of the palace with ten mutes, hunters, and maids, bearing before her on her saddle the little daughter of the Princess Agnes.

1905Ruth turned to Prince Ralph with burning, troubled eyes, and said: “Althea’s hour is not yet!”

1906“I am very fond of Althea,” said Prince Ralph simply; “but you are my dear love.”

1907From an early hour, through all the day, messengers rode from the palace to the ends of Varandaleel, bidding the people rejoice, since that day two of the children of Indra were to wed; and in the cool of the evening Prince Raleigh married Ruth to Prince Ralph, and Vashti to Lord Lisdor. A wedding-feast was held in the great hall; the mutes had spent all their pains to make it of a befitting splendour; and through it the musicians played their sweetest, most passionate melodies, the dancers danced their most languishing, voluptuous dances. Vashti, shy and at whiles blushing, watched Lord Lisdor with shining eyes. Ruth, radiant and serene, wore a new air of dignity befitting the flame-coloured mantle of a Princess of Varandaleel: the honour never conferred on the ill-starred Princess Agnes: which hung from her shoulders. And on the face of Prince Ralph his father saw that look of content for which he had so long looked.

1908The while they were feasting, Althea, wrapped in a bearskin, lay gazing at a starry patch of sky through a break in the forest roof. She lay very still, with set lips and steady, tearless eyes, looking into a future empty, may be for ever, of the desire of her heart, full of the unceasing, satisfying labour of keeping the people. Mingling with the forest sounds came the quiet breathing of the little daughter of the dead Princess, curled up within the rampart of her protecting arm; and the faint sound, imperative of the human claim, brought a faint comfort to her troubled heart.

1909At the end of the feast all in the great hall drank the health of the wedded; the gates and doors of the palace were thrown wide; and the voices of thousands of trained singers, young men and maidens, ranged up the ascent from the plain to the palace, burst upon the silence in the Varandal wedding-song, “the song of the bridegroom and the bride.” As it ended, they left the table, and stood a while talking in the middle of the hall. Ruth and Vashti, with a swift glance at one another, came together, and presently, lost to sight among a throng of maids, slipped away.